Starting now, the Frederick William True field notes are LIVE in the Smithsonian Transcription Center. There are four projects so far and you can find them here. We #FWTrueLove Challenge you, fair volunpeers, to complete these field notes by the afternoon of Wednesday, February 18. That will be just in time for a bit of HangTime with Dr. Pyenson.

On Wednesday, February 18, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals Dr. Nick Pyenson will share the interdisciplinary nature of F.W. True's scientific pursuits - plus True’s connections with Smithsonian researchers Stejneger, Dall, Wetmore and, yes even, Baird! As you’re transcribing, you’ll want to read more about True’s time at the Smithsonian Institution in posts from PyensonLab and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

You know this much is True.

BUT WAIT! There’s more to the #FWTrueLove Challenge than transcribing: The Field Book Project wants to know what you’re discovering and you’ll have the chance to unlock even more handwritten correspondence. Here’s what you can do:

Help us map True’s social network

Share interesting True Facts

Review

E-mail us or tweet using the hashtag #FWTrueDetective as you identify interesting facts, correspondents, locations, and other relationships. The details you share will be graphed on the Field Book Project blog. Watch that space for more details of the challenge (*hint!) as it unfolds through the end of February. Curious minds, get ready...

In 1858, the inland port of Middletown, Connecticut, was the largest manufacturer of marine hardware in the United States, at a time when the shipping industry shifted from sails to steam. Frederick W. True was born that year, and unsurprisingly developed a lifelong interest in ships and fisheries, especially as he witnessed the decline of the Yankee whaling industry. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1878, he took a job as clerk with the U.S. Fish Commission, which at the time was headed by the Smithsonian’s second Secretary, Spencer Fullerton Baird.

While Secretary of the Smithsonian, Baird also decided to serve as the first Commissioner of the U.S. Fish Commission (a precursor to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service). Under Baird’s guidance, the Commission became a robust scientific enterprise, undertaking extensive surveys of fisheries along all U.S. coastlines, censuses of fishery laborers, and also collecting data on target species and fisheries infrastructure. Baird was strategic about his influence, and he used the expansion of the Commission as an opportunity to hire promising young naturalists — such as True — and get their foot in the door at the Smithsonian.

Recruited by Baird, True was initially a special agent for the U.S. Fish Commission, but eventually Baird put him in charge of the joint Smithsonian-U.S. Fish Commission display at the Berlin Fisheries Exhibition of 1880, where many of the specimens collected by special agents for the Commission were put on display. At the time, the Smithsonian lacked an official library (for various historical reasons), and Baird rectified this situation in 1881 by donating his own personal library to form the core of a new research library at the Smithsonian. Baird recognized True’s diligence and acumen as a reseacher, and hired him to lead it. True seized on the opportunity, and improved on the idea immediately, forming divisional libraries to meet the specialized needs of individual curators, which still continue to this day (such as the Kellogg Library of marine mammalogy, named in honor of Remington Kellogg, who never met True but succeeded him as a Smithsonian marine mammalogist).

True sometimes diverged from his role as a librarian to fill a void as acting curator of mammals; Baird, who noted True’s ambition and drive, soon appointed him curator of mammals in 1883. While microscopic descriptions were the rage in natural history at the time, True’s poor eyesight made this type of work difficult. True instead recognized the wealth of marine mammals specimens at the Smithsonian that had been generated in part by Baird’s collections from the Commission, as well as collections made by Captain Charles M. Scammon in the North Pacific Ocean in the 1870s and the prolific Edward Drinker Cope, who had been hired by Baird to write a monograph on cetaceans, which only came to partial fruition. Thus, True had the opportunity and motivation to expand his interest in marine fisheries and take on the study of cetaceans.

In 1895, the U.S. Fish Commission called True back into service for a study on the Northern fur seal industry in the Pribilof Islands, off Alaska. The Commission, lacking confidence in the local Russian naturalist’s conclusion about sustainable yield of fur seal skins from the islands’ rookeries, launched their own investigations. True, as he would in other field expeditions, brought along his father-in-law, D. W. Prentiss, as well as one of his chief preparators, William H. Palmer, who collected specimens while there. (Palmer would also later collect Miocene fossil marine mammals for True in Calvert County, Maryland). En route to the Pribilofs, the team dropped off another Smithsonian curator, Leonhard Stejneger, at the Commander Islands, near the Kamchatka Peninsula of modern-day Russia. Stejneger, who slightly preceded True, collected many marine mammals as well, including a beaked whale specimen that True named for him, Mesoplodon stejnegeri. True’s report on their work at the Pribilofs offered novel conservation strategies for the population, although he viewed a ban on pelagic sealing as the only effective strategy.

In 1899, True travelled to Newfoundland where a shore based whaling operation had been started by the Cabot Whaling Company at Snooks Arm in Notre Dame Bay. True joined the crew on the steam powered ships as they harpooned and returned to the station fin whales, as well as a smaller number of humpbacks. True observed and photographed the whaling operation, but also participated in crew activities, even including manning the harpoon on a successful fin whale hunt. As whales were flensed and processed, True availed himself of an opportunity to study the whale’s anatomy, especially at a second station that was opened at Balaena Station in Hermitage Bay, Newfoundland, in 1901. There, the primary target species were blue whales, which were too fast and too large for earlier fisheries to tackle. This operation offered an exciting new opportunity to study them, and generated important collections for the USNM, including a full plaster cast of one individual for the St. Louis Exposition of 1903.

True’s ultimate contributions to marine mammal science were three profound monographs on Cetaceans. Grace Costantino provided a nice summary of his 1899 monograph on oceanic dolphins (“A Review of the Family Delphinidae”) at BHL’s blog last week. True’s lengthy “Whalebone Whales of the Western North Atlantic” in 1904 marked the first affirmative answer to whether baleen whales on opposite sides of the Atlantic constituted the same species and populations. To arrive at that conclusion, True provided the first extensive review of the validity of earlier descriptions of American whales by Scammon and Cope, an effort which relied on his own travels to other museum collections, and the rapidly growing one at his home institution (USNM). His 1910 work on beaked whales (“An Account of the Beaked Whales of the Family Ziphiidae”) similarly cleared up a mess of older taxonomic names for this enigmatic group of toothed whales, which have been a special strength of the Smithsonian since the time of Baird. In the past 100 years, many beaked whale species have been named after Smithsonian curators and other research associates, including: Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), Stejneger’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon stejnegeri), True’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus) and Perrin’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon perrini by emeritus curator of marine mammals James G. Mead). For his own contributions, True’s name is bestowed on the common names of two rodent species that he described and published on from Asia.

In True’s entry for the Dictionary of American Biography, Alexander Wetmore (an ornithologist, Smithsonian curator, and the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian) reflected that True was “profound as a student, and exact and punctilious as an administrative officer,” traits that no doubt served him well in his major capacities at USNM. By 1897, True was appointed head curator of the Department of Biology, with broad administrative direction over all biological work at USNM, and served as acting secretary of the entire institution for a short period of time that year. When the natural history collections of USNM moved across the National Mall to the newly built natural history building in 1910 (today, the main museum for NMNH), True became assistant secretary of the Smithsonian in charge of the library and of the international exchange service, a position that he occupied until his death in 1914.

During the month of February, the Smithsonian Field Book Project is celebrating Frederick William True, a scientist, librarian, and administrator who worked for the Smithsonian from 1881 until his death in 1914. You can find an introduction to the project at (link to blurb, below, on FBP blog) and, as the month unfolds, additional information at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, Pyenson Lab, Smithsonian Transcription Center, Smithsonian Archives, and Smithsonian Libraries blogs and social media accounts, using the hashtag #FWTrueLove. Please join in the fun and let us know what you discover about Frederick William True!

During this month of February, the Smithsonian Field Book Project is celebrating Frederick William True, who worked at the Smithsonian from 1881 until 1914 and held a variety of positions during his career, including Smithsonian Librarian, Curator of the Division of Mammals, Executive Curator of the United States National Museum, Head Curator of the Department of Biology, and Assistant Secretary in charge of the Library and International Exchange Service. True is an outstanding example of the deep connections among what may seem like separate Departments, Divisions, and units at the Smithsonian, which still exist even today.

His field books showcase the close associations True embodied: today, one is held by the Division of Mammals, one by the Division of Birds, one by the Department of Paleobiology, and six by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Through the Field Book Project, these and other field books can be reunited, digitally and online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Smithsonian Collections Search Center.

This month, in collaboration with its partners, the Field Book Project will be coordinating a series of blogs about FW True’s life and contributions to science. These blogs will provide a background for and culminate in a Smithsonian Transcription Center #FWTrueLove challenge, beginning on Valentine’s Day, to engage interested audiences and Volunpeers in True’s written legacy and see how much we can transcribe in as little as one week! Nick Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals, will help to lead the challenge by engaging with the Volunpeers on social media and providing additional information as the Volunpeers make their way through True’s materials. Details about that challenge, including the special Kellogg Library collections tour (featuring items actually touched by F. W. True!) Dr. Pyenson will offer to those who participate, will be released later this month on the Field Book Project blog. Again, the blog series will begin on this Thursday, February 5th, and the Transcription Challenge on Saturday, February 14th. Stay tuned and please join in the fun!

This celebration is a collaborative effort between multiple Smithsonian units and departments, including the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Smithsonian Libraries and Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Smithsonian Transcription Center, and the NMNH Department of Paleobiology in order to showcase the unique breadth and depth of the archival science materials here at the Institution.

Thursday, 29 January 2015

If you read our blog post from January 15th, 2015, you learned the story of a fascinating field book from the Africana Train Collection housed in the Cullman Special Collections Library of National Museum of Natural History. This lovely and unique volume of Lepidoptera specimens had been highlighted in an earlier blog post from the Field Book Project, which inspired some lovely artwork, which led a researcher to ask about the book contents, which led to a transatlantic exchange of emails between external researchers and Smithsonian staff. This exchange helped us determine that the volume had an even more interesting provenance than we had realized, in addition to showing us just how unique it is in construction and content. All of this interest and activity led to the volume being digitized, transcribed, and made available on Collections Search Center and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The broader story of that blog post relates to the field book creator. Though documentation initially indicated that the volume was the creation of Sir John Kirk we learned that it was actually created by Horace Waller. This meant that our catalog records needed to be amended and happily provided me the excuse to delve into Waller’s life and relationships, both to people and to the book now sitting in our archives.

If you ever look at our creator records, you’ll see that they are usually a paragraph or two in length and cover the major events in a life. Unfortunately there is often wonderful detail that just doesn’t fit in the structure of a biographical abstract. Luckily for me, we have blog posts to share the rest of the story.

The biographical description I created is below.

Horace Waller (1833-1896) was a clergyman, writer, and antislavery activist, and was known for his work in Africa. He was born in London and first traveled to Africa as Lay Superintendent of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa under the first Bishop of Central Africa, Charles Frederick Mackenzie. The group arrived in Zambezi in 1861 and traveled to the Nyasa highlands, where they established a mission. During his time in Africa, he worked with noted figures of the time such as Sir John Kirk and David Livingstone, and became an anti-slavery activist. He is known to have collected botanical and entomological specimens. Waller left the mission after a disagreement with Mackenzie's successor about the liberated slaves who were under care of the Mission. After returning to England in 1864, he became a minister, first serving at St. John's Chatham, and later as rector of the Twywell parish (1874-1895) where he remained for twenty-two years. During his lifetime he wrote several books covering numerous subjects relating to Africa. He is also known for his work editing the journals of David Livingstone. Waller retired to Hampshire shortly before he passed away in East Liss on February 22, 1896.

In order to compose my one paragraph, I wandered through Wikipedia, Archivegrid (Yale Divinity School), finding aid at University of Oxford, and obituaries through JSTOR on him and his son. In my limited time with materials describing Waller, I learned about a man whose lifelong concerns and work were shaped in important ways by a mere four years in Africa. He was in East Africa during a seminal time in history, interacting is notable figures whose names, such as Livingstone, are still known to the public. The part I found particularly touching was that the relationships and experiences even informed how he named his son, Horace Kirk Waller.

This volume, mistakenly attributed to Kirk, was seemingly given to him. Waller so esteemed him that he gave his only child Kirk’s name. It makes one appreciate the care and thought that must have gone into creating such a treasure.

According to an obituary in The British Medical Journal, Jan. 29, 1955, Horace Kirk Waller lived a commendable life, working as a physician and best known for his work with infants at the British Hospital for Mothers and Infants at Woolwich. The obituary speaks of his “gentle courtesy and infinite kindliness of heart.” Such was the man who bore the names of two notable figures.

To see the volume that inspired this post, visit here at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Thursday, 22 January 2015

As part of the Field Book Project’s mission to increase accessibility to field book content, the conservation team conducts condition surveys of field notebooks in various divisions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). These surveys give us a better understanding of a collection’s particular conservation needs, helping us determine which items need stabilization treatment in order to be safely handled, which need better housing for long term storage, and which are ready to be digitized and transcribed. While surveying the field books in the Division of Birds, Chris Milensky, a Museum Specialist in the Division, pointed out a wonderful collection of letters, specimen cards, and field notebooks of Professor D.B. Burrows, a collector and student of bird eggs and nests.

Chris Milensky holding the Burrows papers

The D.B. Burrows collection is exactly the kind of thing that gets us excited here at the Field Book Project. As it turned out, this collection had not yet being cataloged by FBP team member Lesley Parilla, and was also in need of new housing and conservation treatment, Lesley began by creating a cataloging record for the papers and field books and at the same time performed some initial rehousing, placing the items in labeled, archival-quality folders and document boxes.

Lesley rehoused the papers into folders and document boxes.

Once Lesley began cataloging, she brought the newly rehoused items to me here in the conservation lab. In this case, the conservation treatment of the D.B. Burrows papers occurs simultaneously with cataloging as many of the items have inaccessible information which requires treatment before it can be accessed and added to the catalog record. For example, there are many letters in their original envelopes which need to be carefully unfolded, flattened, and then rehoused before Lesley can read them and incorporate details about their authors, dates, and recipients into a catalog entry PHOTO 3

Rehousing for D. B. Burrow correspondence.

The treatment and cataloging of the D.B. Burrows papers is ongoing and will take some time, particularly with the large volume of correspondence that requires, as mentioned above, very careful treatment in order to be conserved. However, when they are complete, the D.B. Burrows papers will be digitized and sent to the Smithsonian Transcription Center, where digital volunteers and citizen archivists can help transcribe D.B. Burrow’s writings. Not much information is available about Burrows online, and we here at the Field Book Project look forward to adding to the digital body of knowledge about this interesting scholar!

Horace Waller was an English missionary and anti-slavery activist in the 19th century. In 1859 Waller joined the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). As Lay Superintendent to the UMCA, Waller befriended the famous missionary Dr. David Livingstone and botanist John Kirk who were in Africa as part of the British government-funded Zambezi Expedition. Livingstone, as head of that expedition, and Kirk, as naturalist, together navigated the Zambezi River area between 1858 and 1863. The purpose of the expedition was to chart the geography and catalogue the natural resources of the area. On 19 March 1863 Kirk wrote in his diary “Mr Waller is making a fine collection of insects, chiefly of the Lepidoptera”. Waller assembled this field book of the Butterflies collected in the Shire Valley East Africa from his time there.

Waller was an amateur naturalist, but a clearly practiced one, who shared his collection with experienced naturalists such as Roland Trimen who later thanked Waller for showing him specimens from the Shire valley.

The butterfly specimens in Waller’s field book were prepared by an infrequently employed technique termed lepidochromy in the 19thcentury. Lepidochromy involved using humidified, relaxed wings and an adhesive such as gum Arabic. By pressing the wings between two prepared papers the dorsal and ventral sides could be separated from each other and the scales, or “feathers”, would remain. Once mounted, the bodies of the insects were drawn in. This type of transfer illustration is classified as a nature print.

Ninety years before Waller ventured into Africa, George Edwards published a group of essays in 1770 that included “A Receipt For taking the Figures of Butterflies on Thin Gummed Paper” This, or a slight derivation of it, was the method most likely employed by Waller to mount his “Flys”. By 1889, refinements in the process of lepidochromy were outlined completely in Scientific American, Supplement. It was a simple but onerous process where in the wings were transferred twice so that the brighter outer layer of scales would be right side up when mounted.

Printed volumes with nature prints were also published, but they were few. Printed editions were very labor-intensive and required hundreds and sometimes thousands of specimens. An immodest example is Sherman F. Denton’s two volume set of Moths and butterflies of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains (Boston, 1900) where more than 50,000 butterflies and moths were immortalized.

The scholarship on this humble field book continues. Dr. David Clough of the Namizimu Institute in Mangochi Malawi recently inquired about the volume for exhibition after seeing the blog post, “The Art in Field Books” by Lesley Parilla. Dr. Clough then shared Waller’s butterflies with his colleague Dr. Lawrence Dritsas, a historian of science at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. When the field book was acquired into the collection of Judge Russell E. Train in the late 20th century the authorship had been misattributed to Sir John Kirk. Dr. Dritsas has since properly identified the work’s creator as Horace Waller. Waller’s monogram is evident on the cover just below the title. From a book historian’s point of view, now the only remaining question is at what point was the field book’s authorship confused.

Lepidopterists both at the Smithsonian and in Africa have also been consulted about the specimens and a complete and accurate list of the butterfly types have been identified by Dr. Clough and Smithsonian lepidopterists Dr. Robert Robbins and Mr. Brian Harris.

With thanks to Drs. Dritsas, Clough, Robbins, as well as Brian Harris and Lesley Parilla.

Wednesday, 31 December 2014

It’s been quite a year here at the Field Book Project. We've experienced many changes, all for the better, we believe! To summarize, in the last year we've joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) through our new connection with the Smithsonian Libraries, added a new project manager and conservator, and begun to contribute to the Smithsonian Transcription Center. We are now at 7377 field books cataloged and 516 digitized, with more than 250 of those digital field books in BHL and around 100 digital field books transcribed by the Smithsonian “volunpeers.” And all of these developments came on top of regular activities.

What, exactly, do these developments mean for the Project? Well, transcription means we can do full-text searching of our content for far more detailed and specific terms than we could before. We can also search transcribed content across all of the completed field books and alongside all of the records contributed across the Smithsonian, as the transcribed content is added to the Smithsonian Collections Search Center. Furthermore, by adding our field books to BHL we can access our materials in new ways and see them alongside publications and other institutions' field books. Finally, having new staff means we can do more of this great work faster!

We experience the benefits of these changes on a daily basis as they make our materials ever more accessible, both to us as we utilize the field books for reference questions, research, and outreach, and also to our users, as we mentioned in our last blog post. As we’ve said before, we are very thankful for the hard work of our staff, interns, and volunteers!

Curious to see an example?

We have decades of diaries from David Crockett Graham. Many of these have now been transcribed. With one search on Collections Search Center, I was able to find quotes from his entries relating to his New Year’s activities. They demonstrate the range of the sentiment and specificity we often find in content.

I reckoned with Ho and Yang. There was a years wages due Yang at six dollars Mexican a month, and I reckoned wages, travel expenses, etc., to Jan. 1, 1932.

Dec. 31, 1932. Ho and Yang are going to Suifu to pass the New Year holidays, after which they will return and get to work. I reckoned and paid all accounts to date. They cannot go down the rivers because the armies of two different generals are along the rivers and there are also plenty of brigands. They are taking a round-about route overland through Tsilintsing.

January 2, 1934. A few weeks ago the Wa Si aborigine collector Li Song Hin was seriously ill and would have died if I had not sent him to the hospital.

Two days ago Ho Son Chuen came in with news that Yang Hong Tsang had been burnt to death by a forest fire while hunting the tarkin on a very high mountain. We are trying to recover his body and give him a decent burial. This will be very hard on his family, for he was their main means of support.

This is the hardest luck I have met in all my years collecting. He was much more like a son to me than a hired man. He has been one of my most dependable workers for many years. My new year was not a very happy one.

Friday, 26 December 2014

I’ve been here five years and still love my job, not just because of the variety of materials I work with, but also because of the response to our work that we see from all kinds of researchers. Recently I received an email from a researcher who found a catalog record from the Field Book Project describing a field book collection in a department of National Museum of Natural History. He said that when he sat down and looked at the content it was like the feeling of Christmas morning! Playing “Santa” with field books has never been so rewarding. We are so happy that the cataloging, digitization, transcription, and online publication efforts of the Field Book Project team can help researchers feel like it’s Christmas all over again on any day of the year.

Wednesday, 24 December 2014

Christmas card found in field notes, "Kellogg - 1929" in the Department of Paleobiology. SIA Acc. 14-187. Image courtesy of Lesley Parilla.

What is the highlight of your holiday season? A massive holiday feast? Connecting with family and friends? Or is it finding the perfect gift for loved ones? Whatever your favorite part of the holiday season is, it probably requires a bit of your time and attention.

It’s the same for our collectors--and to our great joy, they sometimes choose to leave behind their remembrances or preparatory lists in their field books. Below are a few of our favorites.

William Healey Dall spent Christmas of 1866 wintering over in Alaska during the Western Union Telegraph Expedition. He recorded the notes below about the meal he shared with his companions in his “Diary, 1866 - May 25, 1867."

MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1866.

Morning. Warmer and a little snow. Spent most of the day in preparing for Christmas and making four pies two of the native cranberries & two out of some of Mrs. Bridges preserves of strawberry and a strawberry shortcake the first ever made in the country. Evening. Work on my vocabularies of Koyoukunsky, with Kurilla, and write. Captain K has had a hosaker for several days who sews quite well and is small and inoffensive except that she washes in the kettle of various slops

TUESDAY 25

Up early in the morning. After breakfast set to work and make gingerbread, apple dumplings and sauce, which takes nearly all day. After dark get Yagor in and sit down to the best dinner ever eaten in Russian America comprising reindeer & vegetable soup, roast grouse, canned peas tomatoes & lamb chops, dumplings, pies, cheese, coffee

tea gingerbread &c &c. After supper smoke and Whymper reads a [[mumery?]] story and I a parcel of doggerel about the little Puritan Mary Carleton, and conclude the day with a milk pouch and conversation.

Early in our cataloging we found notes from Waldo Schmitt, Curator of Head Curator of Zoology, when he was waiting in New Zealand to travel to the locations in Antarctica via military transport. In a letter to his wife, he expressed some of his thoughts about preparing for the holidays.

Today I want to send X-Mas cards; it’s finally come to the point where I get them or not. The question is to whom to send and how many. If as the bunch here is doing I would get the US stamps on them which we can do from here out, but here is the thought that folks would expect N.Z. [New Zealand] stamps. That decision I won’t make till I get cards written.

James Eike was a prodigious observer of birds in his backyard in Falls Church, Virginia. It seems that in the midst of his note taking he may have also been working on his Christmas list for family and friends, recorded in James W. Eike's "Field notebooks, 1956-1961 : 7-3-58 to 1-14-59.”

The holidays are here and the weather has turned cold at last. Welcome, winter – and in a timely fashion, the Field Book Project has just encountered a few items from Smithsonian expeditions to the world’s cold and snowy polar regions!

Recently, the Field Book Project digitized a volume written by John Murdoch, a naturalist, anthropologist, and the Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 to 1892. It documents his time as part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, from 1881-1883 – the northernmost point of that state and the United States. The Expedition was part of the first International Polar Year, a series of coordinated, international expeditions to the Polar Regions primarily to collect and study geophysical and meteorological data. Murdoch worked primarily as a naturalist for the expedition but also had an interest in anthropology which led him to interact extensively with the local Inupiat people and collect many natural and cultural specimens and objects. His observations were recorded and eventually made available as part of the volume “Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition,” published by the GPO in 1892. According to one review of its reprint on Amazon, “for anyone who needs to identify artifacts, whether archaeological or ethnographic, from this general region, this is the best resource there is besides an Elder. In fact, Murdoch has illustrations of things that some Elders of today have never seen in use.” The field books digitized, titled by the author “Catalog of birds” and “Record of collections made,” were lovely and thorough, often including nomenclature in the native language as well as the English translation, and pointed me in the direction of further research into the International Polar Year that inspired the Expedition!

The first International Polar Year grew out of a proposal by Carl Weyprecht (1838-1881), an explorer with an interest in geography and meteorology particularly in the Polar Regions. He wished to establish cooperative international data-gathering efforts across several coordinated Polar stations and with the same equipment and goals in order for data collected to be effectively compiled, compared, analyzed, and utilized. After debates, delays, and amendments, and after its author’s death from tuberculosis, Weyprecht’s proposal (first presented during the second International Meteorological Congress in 1879) was accepted at the third meeting of the Polar Commission in August 1881.

Eight stations supported by seven nations were certain from the beginning: Point Barrow and Lady Franklin Bay/Fort Conger (United States), Godthaab/West-Greenland (Denmark), Jan Mayen (Austria), Mosselbay/Spitsbergen (Sweden), Bossekop near Alten/Finmark (Norway), Sagastyr/The Mouth of the Lena (Russia), and Dickson/Siberia (The Netherlands). Twelve Arctic stations ended up being established, with one additional station each for the United States (Fort Rae/Great Slave Lake), Russia (N. Zemlya), and the Netherlands (Kara Sea), and two more from newly participating countries, Germany with a station at Kinguafjord and Finland with a station at Sodankylä. )

Though it is not clear exactly why John Murdoch began to collect ethnographic items on an expedition commissioned for geophysical and meteorological data, it was likely a combination of his own interests and the interests of then-Secretary Spencer Baird, who was eager to expand the museum’s collections. Nonetheless, Murdoch’s collections and subsequent report have continued to be some of the more valuable results of the Point Barrow Expedition for current researchers.

I’d like to pause and add that I owe much of the history mentioned above to an excellent 2004 report by Cornelia Luedecke, titled The First International Polar Year (1882-83): A big science experiment with small science equipment,” which can be found online at this link. Additional information was found in Smithsonian Contributions to Alaskan Ethnography: The First IPY Expedition to Barrow, 1881– 1883, by Ernest S. Burch Jr., which may be found on page 89 of the proceedings volume of “Smithsonian at the Poles” symposium from May 2007, at this link. For further observations on the nature of Murdoch’s collecting, the Catalogue raisonné of the Alaska Commercial Company Collection, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology is also interesting, as it notes the interactions between the Company and several of the Smithsonian staff involved, including Secretary Baird. The text for that item may be found on this page, and the catalog record for the item at the Smithsonian may be found here. For further information on the first International Polar Year, the NOAA website on the topic is also informative. Please click through and read if you would like more information!

And now…what about the Antarctic?

In Weyprecht’s original proposal, Antarctic research stations were recommended, and two were established, at Cape Horn (by France) and South Georgia (by Germany). Unfortunately, there weren’t any Smithsonian scientists at those stations! However, I looked through our records and found a Smithsonian expedition to the Antarctic from about eighty years later, the Palmer Peninsula Survey, U.S. Antarctic Research Program, 1962-1963, where Smithsonian staff were sent to take part in the Department of Defense work in sites across Antarctica as part of the U.S. exchange representative program. The records we have from this survey come from the papers of Waldo Schmitt, Curator of the Division of Marine Invertebrates and later Head Curator of the Department of Biology and later Zoology (when the departments were split in 1947), a zoologist by training whose specialty was decapod crustaceans.

As it turns out, the base for the survey was McMurdo Station (also see the National Science Foundation website on McMurdo Station and this image, from the Field Book Project blog). McMurdo Station was also the center of scientific and logistical operations for many expeditions during the first International Geophysical Year (July 1, 1957, to Dec. 31, 1958), an event in turn inspired by the success of the International Polar Year, which by that point had already been repeated once (1932-1933) and was in fact repeated again in 2007-2008, due to the success of previous efforts (see the Senate Resolution for the 2007-2008 year at this link). It’s a small world, indeed!

The Survey operated in and around multiple Antarctic Sites, including Marguerite Bay, Dorian Bay, Discovery Bay, Admiralty Bay, Wilhelmina Bay, Paradise Harbor, the Weddell Sea, the Argentine Islands, the Melchior Islands, Danco-Couverville Island, Alcock Island, and Deception Island, all in the area of the Palmer Peninsula and South Shetland Islands. Though the Field Book Project does not have many items from Waldo Schmitt digitized (yet), from our cataloging efforts we know that the Survey covered observations on marine invertebrates and vertebrates, geography, botany, and entomology – a comprehensive trip that even included observations on whaling and ‘flensing’ a whale, an activity I also vividly remember reading about in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick!

Schmitt had a long and distinguished career at the Smithsonian, leaving us with thousands of specimens for study (29,000 from the Palmer Peninsula Survey alone) and over 200 field books documenting his work in areas as diverse as the Bahamas, Galapagos, the east and west coasts of South America, Alaska, and the Antarctic. His Palmer Peninsula work was so comprehensive that, in recognition of his contributions, the Board of Geographic Names designated a series of outcrops at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula “Schmitt Mesa.”

Though Schmitt’s Palmer Peninsula field books are not completely digitized, we do have a selection of excellent photographs from him on the Project’s Flickr page, and the catalog records of his field books can be found in the Smithsonian Collections Search Center. The Field Book Project blog has featured his photographs before, as well as an overview of his extensive travels; the Smithsonian Archives has an excellent collection-level record detailing more of his biographical information; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology has an even more extensive obituary available here celebrating Schmitt’s many accomplishments, and none of those sources even approach his official biography by Richard Blackwelder titled “The Zest for Life, or, Waldo Had a Pretty Good Run: the Life of Waldo LaSalle Schmitt.”

The two expeditions highlighted in this post, Arctic and Antarctic, further call to mind the importance of historical research as well as historical records’ value to current research. The documentation of geographies, meteorology, and the flora and fauna of the Polar Regions is even more important now, as the Polar Regions are undergoing rapid change that may force their fragile ecosystems to alter drastically.

And outside of the joy we feel at being able to help the Smithsonian scientists through Field Book Project activities, there are other delights we get to experience, such as the places we get to travel just by reading field materials from coast to coast, continent to continent, and pole to pole. The Smithsonian’s passionate researchers will travel to the cold and snowy ends of the earth to complete the work that they love! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Mele Kalikimaka, Feliz Navidad, and all of those other wishes – happy holidays from the Field Book Project to you.

Tuesday, 09 December 2014

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Women's Committee awarded a one-year grant to Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) to build online exhibitions to showcase the scientific and historical contributions of Women and Latino naturalists and illustrators. The project, entitled Notable Women and Latinos in Natural History, draws from content in BHL and uses the Biodiversity Library Exhibition (BLE) platform developed by BHL Europe.

Field books from all five women were cataloged as part of the Field Book Project. Field books of Calderon and Chase were recently made available on Biodiveristy Heritage Library (BHL) through work with Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA). We encourage you to take a look at their publications and field books, and experience their work firsthand, available through resources on Smithsonian's Collections Search Center, BHL, and SIA.

Winter has made its appearance. Daylight is shorter; days are colder. At least in DC, this is the weather that defines the need for “comfort food.” The field books documenting work in places like the Arctic take on a special meaning. What might comfort food be in the Arctic?

William Healey Dall was the leader of the Western Telegraph Expedition. He assumed the position at the age of 20, after the untimely passing of his colleague, Robert Kennicott. The winter of 1866-1867 was unique in that the expedition decided to remain in Alaska, instead of wintering in the mainland United States. The young Dall was newly appointed head of the expedition and was spending his first winter in the Arctic.

This first winter would be the first of many. Dall became an expert in the geology and wildlife of Alaska. I was intrigued how he dealt with his first winter, and what his choice of language and topic might tell me.

In my imagination, I figured that as winter came on, and daylightdecreased, he would be able to little fieldwork. Most of his time would be preparing for when the weather was better, keeping expedition participants in line, and perhaps spending time with locals. Several of our researchers have become quite descriptive about their food in similar challenging circumstances. Would Dall do the same?

I decided to search his diary for the word “make”. He used this term in both cases where he stated the food was a failure. The word shows up over a hundred times in the diary. As you might expect most of them refer to “making” sketches, or equipment for the work. Then winter comes, and the entries change. Entries are shorter, and almost each reference to “making something” involved food.

December 1 --Make Flapjacks for dinner.

December 13 -- Make flapjacks & bread with saleratus & cream of Tartar & they both prove rather a failure.

December 23 -- Make some gingerbread and get some fish from the fish trap where there is a good deal today.

December 25 -- Up early in the morning. After breakfast set to work and make gingerbread, apple dumplings and sauce, which takes nearly all day.

January 14 -- Whymper makes an abortive attempt to steam some dried apples.

February 2 -- Morning. Cold and disagreeable. Make up some brandy out of alcohol & fixens and the Captain gets the Russians drunk. These miserable dogs are the veriest beasts I ever saw. Make some pies. Ennis is probably off for Port Clarence. My letter was delivered. He has drawn all the powder & grub from the redoubt and 3000 lbs flour from Stepanoff.

February 3 -- Make some dumplings.

February 10 -- Make dumplings which are a failure and give old Ivan a parkie. Got all my crew for the up trip.

February 14 -- Make some biscuits & Whymper makes a pie.

February 19 -- Morning. Clear and fine. Go down to the lower point of the Nulato river to take angles for a chart. Come back and make some good gingerbread.

February 22 -- Morning. warm and cloudy. bath day & get a good hot bath Dyer makes some bread & gingercakes & Whymper burns them. Have some pea soup. Write to father on a long letter begun sometime ago. Two birds brough

February 23 -- Morning. a little colder. Writing to father. and getting out trading goods. Evening. put away some specimens & skin two birds. Make up some liquor for the Captain who gives Antoshka a drink and rather fuddles him.

February 24 -- Morning. Warm & windy. Dyer makes bread.

March 3 -- Morning. Clean out and take up the deerskin mats. Get out goods for trip. Make dumplings & sauce for dinner.

March 6 -- Morning. Kurill brings in four birds. Peetka pays me a sable for dressing his hand since he hurt it. Make a huckleberry pudding & sauce. Afternoon take some angles. feed the dogs. write out report for C

March 17 -- Morning. Set to work to copy my meteorological observations for the past six months and spend all day at it. Whymper makes some pies.

Clearly, a challenging first winter away from the normal supplies and comforts! However, it seemed that the expedition made the best of it, specializing in flapjacks, pies, gingercakes, bread, soup, dumplings, puddings, and inevitably, a sip or two of liquor. How do your winter plans compare?

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Holidays in the field are a favorite topic for the Field Book Project. Collectors end up in far flung places, and sometimes share descriptions in their field books of unconventional holiday celebrations. Thanks to the Transcription Center volunteers, we’re able to share some field observations from one of our citizen scientists, James Eike. These notes are unusual compared to the other holiday field book entries we’ve shared in the past.

They describe what Eike saw in his backyard in Falls Church, Virginia, in 1982. This kind of day, for many, may be an example of the best of many worlds – a holiday, a day for field work, and day at home with family.

Children and field work. It may sound incongruous, yet there are strong connections to children in several of our cataloged collections. You might think that the links would be limited to images or mentions of the children of collectors, colleagues, or local inhabitants. However, Smithsonian Institution’s collections include something you might not expect: children’s field books. As the world celebrates Universal Children’s Day, we thought it a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on these unique items.

What does one find in the field books of children? There is a surprising range of depth and precision. Ornithologist Alexander Wetmore’s first field book “Field notes, Florida, 1894-1895”, written when he was eight, included a few observations and childhood sketches. By the time he was twelve, his field notes, like “Field notes, January 1898 - April 1902,” became far more sophisticated. They included narrative entries, more consistent content, and descriptions of common names of birds observed, their physical characteristics, birdsongs, types of trees in which seen, and sometimes measurements of nests and weather conditions.

Most of the content of these books focus on the collecting. However, every once in a while they shine a light on the challenges of collecting at a young age. Andrew Caudell wrote in his field book at age 17, [November 8, 1889] “Mother and John give me a little rakeing [sic] this evening because I am not educated and John give me a going over for pestering with Entomology. Jess sticks up for me and says I am all right.”

Children’s field books vary in form and content. Some share personal details, others demonstrate an early attention to detail. However, they all document and therefore celebrate the potential of children as they discover a lifelong interest and master the skills to pursue it.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Last Thursday, I sat down to scan two diaries of Bohumil Shimek, a botanist, zoologist, and geologist of Czech descent whose field books came to the Smithsonian along with his extensive collection of specimens after his death in 1937. He is well-known for his long career and extensive study of the geology and ecology of the American prairies, particularly in his home state, Iowa, though he is also remembered as a champion of education and a supporter of Czechoslovakian independence . In fact, his travels to Europe in 1914, initiated by his invitation to visit the Charles University of Prague, Bohemia, as exchange professor in Botany in 1914, are what led to the two remarkable items I scanned as part of the Field Book Project. Our cataloger, Lesley Parilla, wrote a piece about these items almost a year ago, because they are indeed striking. The volumes capture Shimek’s first impressions of the unfolding of the beginning of World War I:

“There we had the first definitive news that Austria had declared war against Serbia (on the 28th), but still everywhere hope was expressed that peace would come, and it was reported that the King of England would arbitrate the dispute.” (July 29th, 1914)

As the rest of the field book continues, Shimek begins to record more and more impressions of his group’s attempt to travel across countries now at war, while still documenting observations of the countryside’s flora, fauna, and geology. He mentions seeing towns empty of men, being on trains full of soldiers singing about going to war, witnessing women already meeting each other with tears for their absent husbands and sons, and the difficulties of crossing border after border to get back to England and, from there, the United States. On pages 184 and 185 in volume 2 of his diary, he mentions watching their boat go through a row of blockading ships in order to land in England. Finally, in his last few pages, he records his impressions of London, Liverpool, and the passengers on the “St. Louis.”

It is moving to witness Shimek’s progression from the hope in his July entries that England would arbitrate the dispute, to a certainty of war and (in one memorable quote) that “War is indeed Hell!” By September, he writes a no less moving but also chilling statement near the end that the English “are beginning to realize the seriousness of the war.” A war just beginning, whose anniversary we commemorate 100 years later. I’ve transcribed a few of the last pages below and the full journal will soon be available on the Smithsonian Transcription Center. In the meantime, you can find it on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website and read for yourself Bohumil Shimek’s memories of the first few months of the “Great War.”

(Supplementary notes) While we were at London Mr. Washa had meetings with Mr. Kopesky and other local Bohemians, and a police commissioner with officer called on him to investigate. The English are very careful. Of course Mr. Voska had no trouble to show who he is, as he is a “Times” correspondent.

The English have also been watching us closely, but we move about here with a different feeling, as we are among friends. The bearing of the Englishman is less overbearing, and indeed the entire atmosphere is different. We are congratulating ourselves that we are out of the oppressive atmosphere of Austria, and of bullying, insolent Germany. The boasted “culture” of Germany is certainly displaying itself!

We were informed yesterday that the steamer “Teutonie” was taken by the government. It was to sail yesterday. We saw two passengers at the hold who had succeeded in getting 3rd class passage on our boat, the “St. Louis.”

We see bodies of soldiers marching down the streets, and we have seen a few small camps in the country on our way here, but on the whole there does not seem to be any visible effect produced on the activities of the people. There is not that absence of men so noticeable in Austria and Germany, and evidently the English have not more than commenced to use their resources. This promises that England will have the final say in the decision of the great conflict vehicle which is sweeping the world.

[Page 103] In Liverpool (and London) I was struck with the large number of women employed everywhere. There are sales girls in almost every business, the fishmarkets, vegetable and fruit markets, etc., are conducted by them, there are bar maids in hotels, and I presume in drink shops generally, and everywhere they are in evidence. They sell papers on streets, etc.

The fishmarket at Liverpool is interesting. I visited it yesterday. The most common fish is the flounder. There are also eels, and a number of fishes which I do not recognize. Also crabs, lobsters, shrimps, oysters, claws, periwinkle, etc. What of this is cheap food, and such a market must be a blessing.

This is the day when we are filled with joy and hope at the prospect of starting for home! May the good Angel that has been with us continue to shield us! We finally landed, at almost 2 o’clock, on the St. Louis, after examination of eyes, & passports. We found when we got aboard that we were just into the steerage. I am now located in the lowest hold with 2 young Americans. We are trying to have matters improved, as we were sold 3rd class tickets and were then put into the steerage. A great crowd is aboard. …

We left the dock at 5:30 P.M., but delayed a long time before really going out. We are trying to sleep in the 2nd Cabin smoking room.

We have a good many German Americans on board, and most of them are German sympathizers, as might be expected. I found one exception, a New York German who says that [page 104] he has been in America 43 years, and this is his first visit, and he says that he will never go back. He came from Eastern Prussia, and saw the Russian invasion.

When we were on the tender Mrs. Cerny made the remark that we had our hardest time going through Germany. An old German (from St. Louis?) flared up when his daughter (?) told him what Mrs. C. had said, and declared that it was some “damned lies,” and he was not a German! I told him that we know what we had experienced, and he did not. Things quieted down, but it is evident that there is much subdued German sentiment aboard.

The conversation of Englishmen on board indicates that they are beginning to realize the seriousness of the war. They make the war one of principle, for they resent the attack of Germany on Belgium. English papers are full of newer comments on the brutality of the Germans, and there is much raillery at their culture, etc. The German has certainly lost standing with the English, as well as with the rest of the world, and his vaunted culture is a byword.”

We're excited to announce our latest Flickr set, images from the field work of Watson Perrygo in Haiti, 1928-1929.

Watson M. Perrygo (1906-1984) was a field collector, taxidermist, and exhibits specialist for the United States National Museum (USNM). During his career at the Museum he traveled extensively and conducted field work with several notable scientists, including Alexander Wetmore and Remington Kellogg.

In 1928 to 1929, Perrygo traveled and collected specimens with W. M. Poole in Haiti. Photographs in this Flickr set were selected from Perrygo’s personal papers to demonstrate the range of natural history and local communities he observed and documented.

Friday, 31 October 2014

So what scares you? creepy crawlers? zombies? slasher films? How about fear of heights? If so, we might just have the perfect set of images for you this Halloween.

A while back we cataloged a surprising set of photographs. A scientist climbed a LORAN tower in order to document a small island in the Pacific Ocean. He climbed hundreds of feet in the air, and the images he took show some interesting angles. Curious? Check out the images like the one below. But beware an impending case of vertigo if you do!

Tuesday, 28 October 2014

So what makes your skin crawl in terror? Or at least inspires a sudden frisson? Seems some of our field collectors are not immune; sometimes they even share a few notes about it in their field books. We thought we’d share one for this hallowed eve. Florence Merriam Bailey included the story below in her journal from California in 1907.

[Catalina] In the Aquarium were star fish, sea anemones, and octopus – horrible creature- & H told of his fight with one in Bermuda - how he tried to get it and it got angry & chased him on the reefs, swimming so much faster than he could that he had to fight it not to have it throw it's arms around him - fight it with barrel staves beating it off. He said it was funny how a thing of that kind would take hold of your imagination - that he sweat blood before he conquered it. He said their strength is tremendous & they put out arms and grasp you and hold on with suction discs & then draw the object up and cut it across the back of the neck with thin knives.

Monday, 13 October 2014

Last week, with the arrival of many more of the field books to the Biodiversity Heritage Library web portal, I had the chance to dive deeply into the field books of Edward Chapin, entomologist and Curator of Insects at the Smithsonian Institution from 1934 to 1954. I spent the most time in his field book covering a set of travels to Cuba and Jamaica, though mostly Jamaica, in 1937 and 1941. It was a fascinating adventure “down the rabbit hole” into another era of history!

The beetles, bad weather, and endless driving

Several things struck me almost as soon as I began reading, the first of which was how closely Chapin’s descriptions of the insect life of the islands were wrapped with his observations of the weather, travel conditions, car problems, dinner menus, host families and housing arrangements, and even clothing purchases. A set of observations on insect collecting might be as short as a sentence or as long as a page, depending on what caught his attention that day. The second item that struck me was how frustrating these kinds of expeditions could be! Not only Chapin deal with the usual traveler’s woes of lost luggage and poor weather, but he also faced challenges unique to the scientist – the difficulty in finding many types of insects, or one insect in many life stages, or in finding relevant insects at all. It seemed that Chapin sometimes spent days driving from one end of the island to the other, looking for abandoned homes, downed trees, fence posts and post holes, and such beetle- and termite-friendly places to explore, and often finding nothing. However, on other days he was so overwhelmed with his findings that the problem became locating additional jars to hold them all!

Sugar factories, banana plantations, and Panama Disease

I also went further down the field book “rabbit hole” with items that Chapin mentioned seemingly offhand. For instance, in one of his entries, he described his visit to a sugar factory and detailed the process by which cane became sucrose and molasses, which I found fascinating. He followed that entry with one describing the tour of the banana plantations on the island, and how the banana carriers (those who took bunches from the rows of plants to spots along the road where they would be loaded into trucks) received only “three shillings a hundred bunches. The work is hard as it means tramping through mud six or eight inches deep for fifty yards or so with about 150 lbs balanced on the head.” I immediately looked online for a recording of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” and began to read about its history as a Jamaican folk song – the song seems so lighthearted, compared to the work it describes. I can hardly imagine the kind of daily labor that the banana carriers endured.

Chapin even made a brief mention of Panama Disease affecting the banana plants on the island – I did a bit of research and discovered that another strain of Panama Disease is the current cause of problems with the Cavendish banana that we all enjoy at our local grocery stores. “Race 1” of the disease was the cause of the epidemic in the 1950’s that wiped out the previously farmed Gros Michel banana. Chapin’s 1941 journal was recording the disease almost 10 years before it became a widespread problem!

New Seville and Christopher Columbus

“now a large coconut walk but originally the site of the first Roman Catholic cathedral (1505). The foundations have been cleared and in the center of the floor there is a hold about six feet across and ten feet deep, carefully walled with brick, from which a passage leads away to the west. In this passage we found a dozen pieces of very beautifully carved stone, probably the remains of the altar. One piece has the coat-of-arms of the Bishop of Seville, the others are mostly angels and cherubims.”

I did a quick search for “Seville, Jamaica” and found a UNESCO world heritage website for “New Seville,” which hosted Christopher Columbus in the late 1490s and did indeed feature a Roman Catholic church of “Peter Martyr, the first abbot of Jamaica, having begun in 1525.” Someone’s dates are off…I’m inclined to think that Chapin was misled in thinking the church was from 1505, but who knows? At least I learned more about the history of Columbus’ voyages in the new world, and just in time for Columbus Day (October 13th).

WWII Internment Camps

One more historical mention led me to another fifteen minutes or so of research – Chapin’s off-hand mention that the husband in one of the families he met on the island was “at present serving at the internment camp as a guard.” The history I knew of U.S. internment camps during WWII only covered the Japanese-American internment camps in the West. I had no idea that there were internment camps in Jamaica. Who did they hold? A quick search revealed that not only were there internment camps on the islands, but that they held both plantation owners who were of German descent and thus “possibly” sympathizers, as well as the German POW’s from U-boats taken in the Atlantic (see also the one-sentence mention of the German POW barracks in Up Park Camp on this page).

The mongoose and the dolphins

And finally, there were two mentions of animals that I found fascinating. The first was a mention of the mongoose, an invasive species introduced to the islands to prey on the rats that destroyed large amounts of sugar cane. As in many other places, the non-native species proved far more destructive than imagined and became more of a problem than the rats themselves even in 1941. The mongoose lives on the islands to this day, and has contributed to the possible extinction of at least four native species. And second, a mention by Chapin of his journey home, where he was off the coast of Cape Hatteras and recorded being

“in the midst of the heard of bottlenosed dolphins headed north on their annual migration. As far as one can see, in every direction, there are thousands of dolphins moving steadily northward. On either side of the bow, our boat is convoyed by groups of from three to ten animals…we first sighted them at four in the afternoon and they were still with us at dark.”

Today herds of dolphins are recorded as numbering only in the hundreds during their winter migration – nevertheless, what a lovely image with which to conclude my research adventures in the field notebooks of Edward A. Chapin, entomologist, traveler, and recorder of both scientific and humanist history.

For more information:

For more information about Edward Chapin, and to see the full records for his field books held at the Smithsonian Institution, please see his records in the Smithsonian Collections Search Center.

Each of the three field books in BHL has been fully transcribed by volunteers with the Smithsonian Transcription Center. You can find them at the following three links: Cuba and Jamaica, Colombia, Chile.

Tuesday, 07 October 2014

Many of our digitized field books are sent to the Smithsonian Transcription Center to help make the text more accessible to a wider audience. We’ve been thrilled with the response, and the excitement and dedication of Smithsonian’s Transcription Center volunpeers! Transcribers do more than convert handwritten text to machine-readable, searchable text. In fact, one of the most satisfying alternate aspects of their work has been the way in which they have increased communication about the field book materials within and between Smithsonian Staff and other volunpeers. The Transcription Center is not only making the field book content increasingly searchable, but also opening fascinating dialogues with new audiences!

We’d like to share just a few examples from the conversations we’ve been following through the transcription and review of William Healey Dall’s Diary 1865-1867 during his work in Alaska. Curious to have a look yourself? Check out the field book PDF now available through at: https://transcription.si.edu/project/6828

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

It’s not uncommon for specimen collectors to write about how they deal with the stresses, successes, and social gatherings with colleagues. These frequently include passing references to the sharing of libations. In honor of Oktoberfest we want to highlight a particularly well-documented love of a good brew, found in the field book of Robert Silberglied (1946-1982).

What do you expect to find in a field book? Specimen numbers, sketches, photographs…and beer labels? Open Silberglied’s field book from 1965 and that’s exactly what you’ll find. He removed and carefully pasted beer labels from Ballantine Brewery, Dos Equis, and Cerveceria Moctezuma across the inside covers of the volume.

Robert Silberglied, an entomologist, was an Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvard University and Assistant Curator of Lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). His field book from 1965 is part of a collection at Smithsonian Institution Archives and documents field work completed during his days as an undergraduate student at Cornell University. It is an excellent example of one of my favorite types of field books – those from collectors new to the field.

I love these types of field books because they not only document new collectors developing their field book style (what they will record and how) but also the personal thoughts and impressions that are frequently left out of later books as collectors become accustomed to the challenges and peculiarities of field work. These field books can contain passages discussing the value of the work as well as extended descriptions of what may be a collector’s first professional travel abroad. One can feel the enthusiasm and energy of the collectors as they document the beginning of their scientific career.

Envelope pasted into Silberglied's field book, holding postcards sent to his family during his field work in Mexico.

Silberglied’s field book is an interesting example of this type; he doesn’t comment in the text about the novelty of the trip, but instead demonstrates the travel and social side of the work with his choice of inserts and ephemera. Each item is carefully attached, and even after nearly 50 years, these items are well affixed. Items include news clippings, beer labels, postcards showing accommodations and tourist spots, and even the letter signed by his parents giving permission for him to take part in the trip. In his notes, he took the time to list each member of the collecting trip (including those that appear to be family members) and which vehicle they are taking. He describes travel enroute:

[July 12, 1965] 2 bees flew in car window in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and were collected. At gas station in Livingston, Alabama, I noticed some very territorial butterflies: Nymphalid on gas station pump, Libytheid at mud puddle.

Postcards are carefully pasted in and sometimes cut along the gutter so the pages completely close. Perhaps most telling is the envelope pasted in the back labeled “postcards sent home from Mexico.”

Page from Silberglied's field book with a list of participants (per vehicle) for collecting trip in Mexico.

Article from The New York Times, July 7, 1965, pasted into Silberglied's field book describing field work to be completed.

The beer labels bring forward the social aspect of field work. Unlike life in the office, life in the field means spending 24-7 with people; social and professional life must be able to blend. This is one more challenge for a new scientist. Somehow, seeing his field book, I imagine a young scientist, sitting back, having a beer, and taking a moment to appreciate the new and unknown with his colleagues.

So to all who are in the field or yearning to be, cheers! And Happy Oktoberfest.

Tuesday, 23 September 2014

We’re excited to announce our latest Flickr set from the field work of Charles D. Walcott in Montana during the summers of 1904 and 1905. This set of images highlights the work of Walcott who was the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and perhaps best known for his discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils in Canada.

Walcott was unique in the way he utilized photography in his field work. He not only used photos to document his finds, but eventually used them to choose field sites. By the time he discovered the Burgess Shale, Walcott was utilizing panorama photographs that he took with a specially built camera for the purpose.

Images in this set provide a unique overlap of his field note format choices (text, photograph, sketch) for specific sites. We encourage you to compare the photos, their annotations, the caption details, and his narrative descriptions and sketches.

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Page from field book of Donald Erdman, that includes a recipe for pickled herring. Smithsonian Institution Archives. RU 007428, Box 1, Folder 1.

Food is often a topic in the field books. It’s clear that for many collectors, food is an important part of the day, and worth recording. We’ve found grocery lists, restaurant menus, descriptions of meals, and even recipes. Collectors’ opinions can be surprisingly strong when describing their daily intake. We thought we’d share a few of our more recent foodie reference finds.

[Jan. 20, 1963] The highlight of the day was the 8PM dinner at El Pulpo, the little Italian restaurant on the corner below our hotel. Boiled octopus (el pulpo) with a sauce of olive oil & hot red pepper -much over-rated, I think, as it was quite rubbery in texture & flavor, but also rather like the muscle of an oyster.

Our most esteemed berry. Makes delicious jelly. The Aleuts add a small portion of these berries to their preserved Saranas to impart to it the fragrance of these berries. On account of their infrequency these berries command at least quadruple the price of all other berries.

Perhaps the most surprising is how dramatically meals in during field collecting trips can vary. In “Colombian trip, 1944”, Ellsworth P. Killip describes the following meal.

Instituto all day. Perez Arbelaez came about 7, giving me a few specimens and lending his copy of the Mutis paintings index. Then a drink at the Grenada and a very big dinner on [[him ?]] at the French restaurant, Normandie. 15 plates of hors d'oeuvres followed by 15 more of mainly meats. Soup & camembert[sic] followed. Was too completely stuffed to feel like doing anything more so went home and to bed.

These quotes were found in recently transcribed field books. Once again, we’d like to thank the Smithsonian Transcription Center volunpeers for making the content accessible.

Friday, 12 September 2014

Do you feel a strong need to stay “connected”? It seems some of our collectors felt the same way. Richard Eliot Blackwelder (1909-2001), a zoologist, specialized in entomology and the principles of zoology. Educated at Stanford University (B.A. 1931, Ph.D. 1934), he spent much of his career on the curatorial staff of the Division of Insects of the United States National Museum (USNM, later to become the National Museum of Natural History or NMNH), specializing in the morphology, classification, and nomenclature of the Staphylinidae or “rove beetle.” He was in the West Indies with the Smithsonian's Walter Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship from 1935 to 1938. His journal from the period [Journal of Richard E. Blackwelder, West Indies, vol. 2] includes an interesting insight into his own need to stay “connected.”

Puerto Rico [Page] 24, X-15-35

When we first landed in Puerto Rico our radio didn't work very well so I changed all the tubes. Since then we have gotten good reception at night, but can't pick up anything but local stations in the daytime. The following ^[[long-wave]] stations were received in San Juan: WKAQ and WNEL, San Juan, P.R.; WSB, Atlanta, Ga.; WBT, Charlotte, N.C.; WSM, Nashville, Tenn.; WHAS, Louisville, Ky.; WCAU, Philadelphia; WEAF and WABC, New York; WBZ, Boston; WGY, Schenectady; WHAM, Rochester; KDKA, Pittsburgh; WLW, Cincinnati; WTAM, Cleveland; WJR, Detroit; WGN, Chicago; WHO, Des Moines; XEFO, Mexico City.

Tuesday, 02 September 2014

The Field Book Project is pleased to welcome to new members to our team: Julia Blase, Field Book Project Manager, and Andrea Hall, Field Book Project conservator.

Julia Blase, 2014. Courtesy of ??

Julia will be managing day-to-day project operations and coordinating communications between project partners. She has an MLIS from Denver University, an MMS from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and a BA from Duke University. She comes to the Field Book Project from the National Digital Stewardship Residency, a fellowship program with the Library of Congress, where she spent the last year completing a digital asset management analysis, needs assessment, and strategic plan for the National Security Archive.

Andrea Hall, 2013. Courtesy of Kirsten Tyree.

Andrea Hall will be providing conservation assessment and care for field book collections. She originally worked on the Project as an intern in the Fall of 2013. She attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio where she received a B.S. in Biology and has honed her conservation skills at Bowling Green State University Library, Botany Department of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, the Preservation Department of the University of Virginia Libraries just to name a few. We are thrilled to have her rejoining the team in her new role.

Friday, 29 August 2014

Phoenix Island, April 15, 1966. A Brown booby nest with two eggs can be seen in the left foreground of this photograph of the beach and surf on Phoenix Island. Smithsonian Institution Archives. RU 000245 Box 230 Folder 43. SIA2011-1367.

Have you ever wondered about the inspiration for our logo? It is a pressed and dried orchid found in one of the first field books we digitized. The flower was affixed to one of the last pages of the field book with the caption, “One of Clara's orchids.” The Clara in question was Clara Chapin, Edward Chapin’s wife. During Edward Chapin’s work in Columbia, he and his wife spent part of their time with local colleagues and their families. Some of these outings are documented in the photographs Chapin put in his field book, shown below. One of my favorites shows a little girl named Alicia next to a large, unidentified plant.

I decided to try a few word searches of the PDF see if I could discover text that might allow me to surmise the story behind the flower. It turned out to be easier than I expected. With a few searches, I found a phrase that led me to a possible answer. The word “orchid” appears six times in the text; “orchids” only appears four. There is only one reference to multiple orchids being given to Clara. The following text seemed most likely the source of the pressed flower.

Mar. 15. We packed all the morning and were ready for an early lunch. At one o'clock the Murillos called for us. Alicia presented Clara with a huge bunch of orchids, a dozen stems of Cattleya and two dozen stems of Odontoglossum. We had a long wait at the airport but the time was occupied saying goodbye to all of our friends. The Butlers, the Carrolls, with their two children, the Cuatrecasas with their three, Dr Royo and Mrs Brickell.

The orchid may be one of these flowers given to Clara before her departure. The field book includes a brief description of going through Customs, but Edward doesn’t say that Clara had to give up the blooms. So could this orchid be from Alicia? I’d like to think so.

Thanks to the work of the Transcription Center volunpeers, field book text can now be searched for questions like this. Prior to this functionality, a researcher might have to hunt through each of the ninety-eight pages that comprise this book. Being able to conduct quick searches for terms like “orchids” in a transcribed volume means a researcher can rapidly find answers or determine if they must change their search terms.

Thank you to all the vonlunpeers whose work has made this functionality possible!

When I began my work in the Department of Paleobiology, my department contact was kind enough to show me some of the specimens relating to the first field book collection I would catalog. I was to begin with the field books of A. Remington Kellogg (1892-1969) [link], an intriguing figure, who has a substantial history with the Smithsonian Institution. He eventually became the Director of the U.S. National Museum and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1958 to 1962.

The specimens in question need little introduction and are eye-catching to say the least—they were 100,000 year old dung specimens from ground sloths. They are the result of Kellogg’s field work at Rampart Cave in Arizona during 1942, towards the end of his career in the field. I cataloged his work chronologically, so the related field book was the last one I described. This meant, to my delight, I had some time to do a little digging into the story behind this unique specimen.

Scat can be a wonderful source of information on wildlife and its environment. I was excited to learn more about the related field work and, as I looked into the history of what was recorded in Kellogg’s documentation, the story turned out to be more nuanced than I expected.

When Kellogg went to Rampart Cave to study sloth fossils and skeletal remains of other wildlife in the area, he was accompanied by Watson M. Perrygo [link]. Perrygo was a taxidermist with the Museum but also collected extensively in the field with Smithsonian staff.

I learned quickly that Kellogg had a terse style of recording and usually included only information that strictly related to his work. Therefore, the field book content offers little information about personal difficulties or challenges he might have faced at the time. Perrygo, on the other hand, generously gave his time for an oral history interview on Rampart Cave with Pan Henson, Smithsonian’s Senior Historian. And it was through a conversation with Pam Henson that I learned that both Kellogg and Perrygo suffered from a serious respiratory infection during their work in Rampart Cave.

In the interview, Watson Perrygo explained that staff working at the site experienced breathing problems from the onset of field work. They began to use respirators, but their equipment did little to help the situation. In spite of these challenges Perrygo stated:

“What we did was just a drop in the bucket. We took several squares, five foot square samples. But it should be eventually finished, that might take. Someday some young, upcoming scientist, full of ambition, what have you, will go there, and then I hope he'll find some marvelous stuff, and he probably will. But when you go in the cave, you think any minute you’re going to meet a sloth coming around the corner. You really would—just the rocks, the parts where they rubbed on, and the manure allover just like it was just a couple days old lying all over the place. It's fantastic; I mean, you just think any minute they're going to walk right in—just meet one face to face.”

Though Kellogg did not record information about his personal health, the travel details that he recorded in detail make it clear that work at the site was a anything but easy. And at last, towards the end of the field book, Kellogg included a telling figure: he estimated that 2,650 cubic feet of sloth dung had been excavated during the 26 days of work.

As for the rest of story…

During my research I found out a little more about the value of the sloth scat specimens. In 1976, Rampart Cave caught fire. According to a New York Times Article (March 11, 1977 by Boyce Rensberger) the cave, which was noted to be “one of the world’s richest known sources of fossils and other evidence of life in the ice age,” smoldered for months. National Park Service staff eventually decided to seal off the cave in an attempt to extinguish the fire by cutting off oxygen, after finding that using water weakened the limestone ceiling of the cave. The specimen damage was extensive. According to a 1992 article in the American Society of Parasitologists, two thirds of the speciments were destroyed by the fire.

It may appear to be “only” animal scat, but it is in fact a rich source of information on Ice Age life, an item that people risked their health to collect and their lives to save from destruction, and a specimen that is all the more precious because of the loss of its place of origin.

During the past couple of months, I have been interning at the Smithsonian Institution Archives in the conservation lab. I am an undergraduate student at Kutztown University and my work here, for the most part, has been to absorb as much information as I can about book and paper conservation, as I am still new to the processes and techniques of this field. One of the first assignments I received was to go through a couple boxes of field books and papers belonging to Lawrence Walkinshaw and remove the numerous damaging staples within them.

Walkinshaw (1904-1993) was a 20th century dentist who was also a leading expert on cranes in and around the Michigan area. He is credited with recording some of the first field surveys of cranes and other Michigan birds. He wrote three published books and kept large quantities of personal field books. Interestingly, he often adapted his field books very specifically to his needs, including using staples to hold large sections of pages or photographs together within one particular spiral bound book. One of the staples had even, somehow been placed inside the metal coil and latched on to four pages, a situation I had never seen before and which still makes me wonder about how it could have happened. Of course staples, while helpful to Walkinshaw, are damaging to paper over time, and create plenty of work for conservation staff like my colleagues at Smithsonian Archives.

As my internship progressed, I was able to gain enough experience to move from staple removing to mounting fragile botanical specimens. Field researchers often picked samples of the plants that they were researching and pressed them in between the pages of their notebooks or placed them in separate folders. Surprisingly, preserving plants often does not require any special chemicals or special paper. They just need to be pressed under weight between two pieces of paper and left to dry for two to three weeks.

One of the very first field books I worked on was Florence Bailey’s journal from Bermuda, dating to around 1890. Florence Bailey (1863-1948) was a pioneer naturalist who dedicated her life to the preservation of birds and their way of life. She was a very active woman in a male-dominated profession, and accomplished a lot of firsts for women in the scientific field.

Botanical specimen found in Florence Bailey's Journal for Bermuda, March 1890. Photography courtesy of Breann Young.

Botanical specimen found in Florence Bailey's Journal for Bermuda, March 1890. Photography courtesy of Breann Young.

In these field books, the botanical specimens are attached by small pins that are poked through the page twice, securing the small plant into place. Unfortunately for conservators, these pins are a challenge because those pin holes destroy portions of manuscript on the other side of the paper. In other cases, these pins are poked through multiple pages and possibly rust, getting stuck in place. Now with a beginner like myself, this work can be difficult because I had to be very aware of not damaging both the incredibly fragile plant and the paper itself. Only once did I have to deal with a particularly tricky pin, and I was thankful to have the help of my supervisor. All the other pins that I removed were fully cooperative. After the pins were all successfully dislodged from their homes, I mounted the plants onto a sturdy card stock and placed them in protective folders, where they would be preserved safely for years to come.

From removing small little staples to pins holding a fragile plant, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned while interning here at the Smithsonian is to balance problem solving while caring for fragile objects. Every day in the lab is completely different. You never know what you’re going to encounter and what problems may be ahead of you, waiting to be solved. That’s the beauty of conservation.

We are also pleased to make available the first catalog records for collections in the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, covering the work of Frank Whitmore and Remington Kellogg. The Paleobiology records will enhance the field book catalog records that already exist in Division of Mammals and Smithsonian Institution Archives for these two collectors.

The Field Book Project is an initiative to increase accessibility to field book content that documents natural history. Through ongoing partnerships within and beyond the Smithsonian Institution, the Project is making field books easier to find and available in a digital format for current research, as well as inspiring new ways of utilizing these rich information resources.